Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Wed, 2020-11-04 at 21:01 +0900, christopher via evolution-list wrote: > POC, > > Maybe I have just missed this the whole time using gmail, but in the > event in Evolution you did a Select All + Del. How would you recover? I > know Gmail keeps things in the trash for 30 days, so I guess this > what-if scenario would be easily noticed in this time period, but what > if you did something unknowingly and didn't notice until a few months > later? Then I'd lose all my mail. I don't care. The probability of this actually happening without me noticing it is a lot smaller than that of my PC going up in flames or my backup disk suffering bitrot. I do keep nightlybackups of my home directory of course, on an attached mirrored disk. (I'm not a lunatic.) However I'm quite happy for Gmail to take care of that side of things. That's a decision each of us has to make for themselves. > One situation I couldn't recover from in Gmail recently without a backup > was the read/unread status of emails. I somehow messed up a sorting > filter in Thunderbird and marked everything as read mistakenly. I > organize what I need to still read by this attribute, so I would surely > forget to respond to several mails had I not had a recovery solution in > place. In this case I simply turned off the internet to my smartphone > and manually went in and marked them all unread again... A pain in the > ass. I tried restoring from my local backups, but it seems either gmail > was overriding my local changes on sync, or this information was simply > not stored in the mbox backups I had. Either way, I realized how flawed > my backup plan was after this, and thus the start of this thread. AFAIK Gmail pays no attention to your local copy. Evolution on the other hand, does pay attention if you set it up that way, such as with synced IMAP. And you can easily incorporate its local data in your regular backup schedule. > I'm sure gmail has plenty of copies of your data, but do they actual > have backups (i.e. incremental, history reversible?) Without that, if > you make one mistake ALL the copies get mirrored and you're out of luck. Not for mail, to my knowledge (though they do keep generational copies of files in Google Docs etc.). I don't care (see above). poc ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
POC, Maybe I have just missed this the whole time using gmail, but in the event in Evolution you did a Select All + Del. How would you recover? I know Gmail keeps things in the trash for 30 days, so I guess this what-if scenario would be easily noticed in this time period, but what if you did something unknowingly and didn't notice until a few months later? One situation I couldn't recover from in Gmail recently without a backup was the read/unread status of emails. I somehow messed up a sorting filter in Thunderbird and marked everything as read mistakenly. I organize what I need to still read by this attribute, so I would surely forget to respond to several mails had I not had a recovery solution in place. In this case I simply turned off the internet to my smartphone and manually went in and marked them all unread again... A pain in the ass. I tried restoring from my local backups, but it seems either gmail was overriding my local changes on sync, or this information was simply not stored in the mbox backups I had. Either way, I realized how flawed my backup plan was after this, and thus the start of this thread. I'm sure gmail has plenty of copies of your data, but do they actual have backups (i.e. incremental, history reversible?) Without that, if you make one mistake ALL the copies get mirrored and you're out of luck. On 10/29/20 20:16, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: On Wed, 2020-10-28 at 18:25 +, Pete Biggs wrote: Maybe a better question to the entire community would be how do you keep regularly scheduled backups of your mail? For self-hosted servers its a no-brainer, but for gmail accounts or other cloud hosted accounts, I'm really at a loss as to why I cannot find a standard way of doing this. Well gmail is "backed up" - or rather nothing is ever deleted or removed and there are multiple copies in data centres around the world. All other mail providers should also back up things for disaster recovery and anything that uses AWS or O365 will be in a similar position to gmail. Obviously it's not theoretically impossible for Google to suddenly lose all of its data centres, but I don't consider that to be something I need to spend my time thinking about. Over ten years ago I persuaded my university to switch to Google for handling mail, because the cost and effort of doing it ourselves was rapidly overwhelming our meagre resources and we simply couldn't keep up with the community's demands, and of course for an educational institution G Suite (now Google Workplace) was free. There may be extra-technological reasons for not doing that, such as regulatory requirements, suspicion of the provider etc., and of course Google is not the only option, but in our circumstances I consider that to have been an unqualified success. poc ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Thu, 2020-10-29 at 11:41 +, Pete Biggs wrote: > BTW, we too went through the process of outsourcing email, but Google > couldn't/wouldn't commit to housing the data in a certain jurisdiction > so our legal team said no. If you ever want to meet risk adverse > people, just talk to the legal department of a UK university. I hear you :-) poc ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
> Obviously it's not theoretically impossible for Google to suddenly lose > all of its data centres, but I don't consider that to be something I > need to spend my time thinking about. Over ten years ago I persuaded my > university to switch to Google for handling mail, because the cost and > effort of doing it ourselves was rapidly overwhelming our meagre > resources and we simply couldn't keep up with the community's demands, > and of course for an educational institution G Suite (now Google > Workplace) was free. > > There may be extra-technological reasons for not doing that, such as > regulatory requirements, suspicion of the provider etc., and of course > Google is not the only option, but in our circumstances I consider that > to have been an unqualified success. > Yes, I think what I was trying to get across was risk management and risk perception. One can think of lots of scenarios where things can go wrong, but it's weighing up the risk: i.e. likelihood and consequences - I suspect the consequences of Google loosing all its datacenters would be far more problematic than not having a copy of your mail. BTW, we too went through the process of outsourcing email, but Google couldn't/wouldn't commit to housing the data in a certain jurisdiction so our legal team said no. If you ever want to meet risk adverse people, just talk to the legal department of a UK university. P. ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Wed, 2020-10-28 at 18:25 +, Pete Biggs wrote: > > Maybe a better question to the entire community would be how do you > > keep regularly scheduled backups of your mail? For self-hosted > > servers its a no-brainer, but for gmail accounts or other cloud > > hosted accounts, I'm really at a loss as to why I cannot find a > > standard way of doing this. > > > Well gmail is "backed up" - or rather nothing is ever deleted or > > removed and there are multiple copies in data centres around the world. > > All other mail providers should also back up things for disaster > > recovery and anything that uses AWS or O365 will be in a similar > > position to gmail. Obviously it's not theoretically impossible for Google to suddenly lose all of its data centres, but I don't consider that to be something I need to spend my time thinking about. Over ten years ago I persuaded my university to switch to Google for handling mail, because the cost and effort of doing it ourselves was rapidly overwhelming our meagre resources and we simply couldn't keep up with the community's demands, and of course for an educational institution G Suite (now Google Workplace) was free. There may be extra-technological reasons for not doing that, such as regulatory requirements, suspicion of the provider etc., and of course Google is not the only option, but in our circumstances I consider that to have been an unqualified success. poc ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Thu, 2020-10-29 at 01:09 +0900, Bo Buckley via evolution-list wrote: > Ideally I'd like the following setup: > > 1.) Something like Offline IMAP or Evolution's "Synchronize remote > mail locally in all folders" to sync to a local maildir > 2.) Have an incremental backup of this maildir (e.g rsnapshot on > cron) so that I have an actual backup and not just a mirror > 3.) Send and receive emails through Evolution Hi, the more I think of it the more I agree with Pete. To achieve what you want you'll be the safest with the Offline IMAP (or the imapfw, which seems to be a future replacement of it). Then you can configure your account as before, just instead of having IMAP as the Receiving Email server type you'll pick "Maildir-format mail directories" and point it to the Offline IMAP directory. You setup the SMTP as before, to your mail provider. If you had looked up the details then just press "Back" in the New Mail Account Wizard and change only the values, which need changes. You can also configure send-only accounts, with "None" type for the Receiving Email part. You should be able to configure Offline IMAP for multiple accounts, storing data into multiple directories, separately. And when you've it all under ~/Maildir, you can backup (rsync) all of them by one command. Bye, Milan ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Tue, 2020-10-27 at 21:45 +0100, Ángel wrote: > I would expect the folders.db to have important(?) differences (for > instance the message UIDs would all be different), but seems like it > should be slightly more compatible. Any opinion on that? Hi, ah, right, the UIDs will be also different, thus what I suggest would not work at all. (I thought of the extra data the IMAP folder stores in the summary and forgot of the main important bit, the UID.) Thanks for the correction. Bye, Milan ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Thu, 2020-10-29 at 01:09 +0900, Bo Buckley wrote: > Hi Pete (sorry for the missed reply-all last time), Yeah, please try and do reply-to-list not reply-all! > > Thank you for your reply. [And thank you to everyone else for your insight as > well!] > > >A serious question: if you are using IMAP, why do you need to "sync" > >all your mail? > > Because there is no backup on the server that I can restore from and > if I press select all -> delete in Evolution all my mail goes to the > ether without so much as a "are you sure?" dialog. There should be a confirmatory popup on deletion - at least the first time, you can tick "don't ask me again" though. > This is obviously a worst case scenario, but at literally three (two > if you count ctrl+a as one ;) ) quick keyboard clicks and no > confirmation, its a real worry to me. Yes, but mail is never deleted that easily. It will always, I think, be put into a Trash first, then you have to explicitly expunge it to permanently get rid of it. > There are various less severe scenarios where I'd like to have a > backup of all my mail somewhere. Trusting the IMAP server to never > fail is quite risky in my opinion. Do you have a better way to keep a > backup than what I am suggesting? I use ISP's and mail providers that make backups regularly. If yours doesn't, then I might hazard a suggestion that you aren't using the correct provider for your risk perception. > > Also I like to keep a local copy of all mail as I am offline quite > often and need to have all work related email to reference various > things from years past. The local cache will provide that. But it's a cache and considered expendable. You also have to consider coherency between your local copies and the IMAP server - what happens if you modify the local copy when your offline - how do the changes get passed back to the server and so on. It's not a trivial process. > > Another reason is the speed in which I can search for old mail. For > example if I have a client I want to contact again, but don't > remember their name, I can look up the project number and the mail > thread will be right there within a second or two. Google's online > interface is quick enough to do this at about the same speed, but as > for the mail on my justhost.com account, that could take several > minutes before I get a full list of results. Again, that's an issue with your mail provider - I have all my mail remote, albeit mostly on my own servers, and the mail is indexed when it comes in and searching is stupidly fast - I can get search results back from a 200,000 message folder in seconds. > > An even more recent example was when I started this thread. I added > my f...@bar.com account to Evolution, and copy pasted my local copies > to the Inbox. I ended up with a bunch of duplicates and Evolution's > "remove duplicates" was not able to remove them all for some reason. > Now I have a total mess of an Inbox. The quickest way to fix this was > to just delete everything and redump the local backup copies. How > would you fix any large scale issue like this without a backup? That's the issue of playing around with Evolution's internal files. If your mail is remote, only, then you won't get into that sort of trouble. If the duplicates were only local (and hadn't got copied back to the IMAP server), then you just delete the account and start again. If things had got back to the server, then ask your ISP to restore from a backup. > > >Evolution keeps a copy of any mail you read as a local > >cache, there's no permanent store of the mail, it's not a duplicate of > >your IMAP account. > > Doesn't that depend on whether or not you enable the "Synchronize > remote mail locally in all folders" option in Account Editor -> > Receiving Options? AFAIK that's still just a cache - but it just pre-cache's it rather than only caching messages as you read them. Others will probably correct me. > > What I see locally is a mirror of what is on the mail server if I ssh > into it after everything has synced. Am I overlooking something? Where do you see it locally? > > >If you need a local store of *all* your mail, then you might like to > >look at something like Offline IMAP - this will drag down all your mail > >and keep it locally, then you point Evolution at that store rather than > >the actual IMAP account. You may be better looking at that to pre- > >populate with your extant local copy. > > Thats an interesting idea, but how would I handle outgoing mail at > that point? How do you handle outgoing mail when you are offline now? It will be the same - Offline IMAP basically makes your local copy the definitive one and handles the syncing and coherency with the server. Everything else is the same. > > Ideally I'd like the following setup: > > 1.) Something like Offline IMAP or Evolution's "Synchronize remote > mail locally in all folders" to sync to a local maildir > 2.) Have an incremental backup of this
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
Hi Pete (sorry for the missed reply-all last time), Thank you for your reply. [And thank you to everyone else for your insight as well!] >A serious question: if you are using IMAP, why do you need to "sync" >all your mail? Because there is no backup on the server that I can restore from and if I press select all -> delete in Evolution all my mail goes to the ether without so much as a "are you sure?" dialog. This is obviously a worst case scenario, but at literally three (two if you count ctrl+a as one ;) ) quick keyboard clicks and no confirmation, its a real worry to me. There are various less severe scenarios where I'd like to have a backup of all my mail somewhere. Trusting the IMAP server to never fail is quite risky in my opinion. Do you have a better way to keep a backup than what I am suggesting? Also I like to keep a local copy of all mail as I am offline quite often and need to have all work related email to reference various things from years past. Another reason is the speed in which I can search for old mail. For example if I have a client I want to contact again, but don't remember their name, I can look up the project number and the mail thread will be right there within a second or two. Google's online interface is quick enough to do this at about the same speed, but as for the mail on my justhost.com account, that could take several minutes before I get a full list of results. An even more recent example was when I started this thread. I added my f...@bar.com account to Evolution, and copy pasted my local copies to the Inbox. I ended up with a bunch of duplicates and Evolution's "remove duplicates" was not able to remove them all for some reason. Now I have a total mess of an Inbox. The quickest way to fix this was to just delete everything and redump the local backup copies. How would you fix any large scale issue like this without a backup? >Evolution keeps a copy of any mail you read as a local >cache, there's no permanent store of the mail, it's not a duplicate of >your IMAP account. Doesn't that depend on whether or not you enable the "Synchronize remote mail locally in all folders" option in Account Editor -> Receiving Options? What I see locally is a mirror of what is on the mail server if I ssh into it after everything has synced. Am I overlooking something? >If you need a local store of *all* your mail, then you might like to >look at something like Offline IMAP - this will drag down all your mail >and keep it locally, then you point Evolution at that store rather than >the actual IMAP account. You may be better looking at that to pre- >populate with your extant local copy. Thats an interesting idea, but how would I handle outgoing mail at that point? I'm not familiar with Offline IMAP, but if it is just syncing from the mail server (e.g. bar.com), and Evolution is just allowing me to view this locally sync'ed maildir, how would I use Evolution to reply to a message I am reading in this local maildir and have it send from my mail address of f...@bar.com? Ideally I'd like the following setup: 1.) Something like Offline IMAP or Evolution's "Synchronize remote mail locally in all folders" to sync to a local maildir 2.) Have an incremental backup of this maildir (e.g rsnapshot on cron) so that I have an actual backup and not just a mirror 3.) Send and receive emails through Evolution I'm still not exactly sure how step three would look exactly. Keep it as a cache only imap account? Then pull a copy of the sent message from the mail server via step 1? Maybe a better question to the entire community would be how do you keep regularly scheduled backups of your mail? For self-hosted servers its a no-brainer, but for gmail accounts or other cloud hosted accounts, I'm really at a loss as to why I cannot find a standard way of doing this. Looking forward to your insights! On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 1:21 AM Pete Biggs wrote: > > > Then what exactly is the use case for importing from Thunderbird as per > > [the > > manual]( > https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/import-apps-mozilla.html.en)? > > > > > That is surely for importing to local folders, not IMAP folders > > > > > As I have between 50 - 100 GB of mail to sync, with it all backed up > > locally, I'm happy to try to break things in an effort to avoid days if > > not weeks of re-syncing. Are there details on this process (warnings > > heeded) anywhere? > > A serious question: if you are using IMAP, why do you need to "sync" > all your mail? Evolution keeps a copy of any mail you read as a local > cache, there's no permanent store of the mail, it's not a duplicate of > your IMAP account. > > > > > I have access to both the mail server and local machine for all but my > > gmail accounts. I'll test the process on less important demo accounts as > > well. > > If you need a local store of *all* your mail, then you might like to > look at something like Offline IMAP - this will drag down all your mail > and keep it
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On 2020-10-27 at 17:29 +0100, Milan Crha wrote: > On Wed, 2020-10-28 at 00:31 +0900, christopher wrote: > > Are there details on this process (warnings heeded) anywhere? > > No, there are not, because nobody did it yet and should not do that. > > I can think of only a single workaround: > (...) Maybe he could set up an IMAP server on localhost pointing to that local copy, configure evolution to use that server, copying it to the local cache (thus transferring the 100 GB on localhost interface), then change the server configuration to the real server. I would expect the folders.db to have important(?) differences (for instance the message UIDs would all be different), but seems like it should be slightly more compatible. Any opinion on that? Best regards ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Tue, 2020-10-27 at 17:50 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > I don't download All > Mail anyway (in fact I don't sync locally at all). You can even > unsubscribe it if you like. Hi, for what it's worth, I have the All Mails disabled on the Gmail side for IMAP synchronization (otherwise I'd have twice more messages). Otherwise it's true, the messages are "duplicated" (it's in double quotes, because Gmail de-duplicates by Message-ID) in IMAP folders (labels) they are located in. Bye, Milan ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Tue, 2020-10-27 at 10:36 -0600, Zan Lynx wrote: > On 10/27/2020 10:29 AM, Milan Crha via evolution-list wrote: > > That feels like a lot of mails, or just few movies as attachments (just > > kidding). Do you know how many mails this is? My largest IMAP account > > has 498.162 messages at the moment, which is surely less than that > > yours. I do not download all of the history locally, only the last > > month is stored for the offline use, and even that not in all folders. > > I cannot speak for him but I saw he was using Gmail. Their IMAP system > duplicates messages and if you have a large number of folders, some of > which include the same messages plus "All Mail", you can easily end up > with a 5 or 6 times multiplier on message size. I use Gmail via IMAP and although what you say is true, I haven't noticed any real-world impact. The vast majority of messages have only one label (i.e. are in only one IMAP folder) and I don't download All Mail anyway (in fact I don't sync locally at all). You can even unsubscribe it if you like. poc ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On 10/27/2020 10:29 AM, Milan Crha via evolution-list wrote: That feels like a lot of mails, or just few movies as attachments (just kidding). Do you know how many mails this is? My largest IMAP account has 498.162 messages at the moment, which is surely less than that yours. I do not download all of the history locally, only the last month is stored for the offline use, and even that not in all folders. I cannot speak for him but I saw he was using Gmail. Their IMAP system duplicates messages and if you have a large number of folders, some of which include the same messages plus "All Mail", you can easily end up with a 5 or 6 times multiplier on message size. This bothers me less since I tend to turn off local storage of IMAP and limit it to the most basic caching of messages I intentionally read. I can wait for a short message fetch. That helps a lot on Gmail too since I rarely read the "All Mail" folder. -- Knowledge is Power -- Power Corrupts Study Hard -- Be Evil ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Wed, 2020-10-28 at 00:31 +0900, christopher wrote: > Then what exactly is the use case for importing from Thunderbird as > per [the manual] Hi, I do not think Thunderbird import imports also local caches, it imports local accounts only (from the Mail part). > As I have between 50 - 100 GB of mail to sync, with it all backed up > locally, I'm happy to try to break things in an effort to avoid days > if not weeks of re-syncing. That feels like a lot of mails, or just few movies as attachments (just kidding). Do you know how many mails this is? My largest IMAP account has 498.162 messages at the moment, which is surely less than that yours. I do not download all of the history locally, only the last month is stored for the offline use, and even that not in all folders. Note the initial synchronization doesn't download the messages, it only downloads the headers (it depends also on the "Copy for offline operations" option for the account and respective folders), thus it should be significantly less data to be downloaded. Still, it takes time and bandwidth. > Are there details on this process (warnings heeded) anywhere? No, there are not, because nobody did it yet and should not do that. I can think of only a single workaround: a) mimic exact folder structure under On This Computer b) import the respective .mbox files from Thunderbird to those folders c) add an IMAP account d) close Evolution while it is synchronizing the data e) copy ~/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/folders.db file into the IMAP's directory ~/.cache/evolution/mail//; it will overwrite the existing file f) run Evolution This only *tries to* not download the folder summary data, but the format of the On This Computer and of the IMAP is not exactly the same, there will be missing parts, which may or may not cause trouble. It does not restore respective messages, the cache format is different. I cannot tell whether it'll work or not. I cannot tell whether it'll have any side effects or not. I cannot tell... It's all up to you. I would not do this myself. I'd rather "waste" the bandwidth to have things as they are supposed to be. Note that the IMAP (and any other remote account) has the data stored in ~/.cache/, which is a disposable place. When anything happens to the data there, the mail provider will re-download it from the server. Bye, Milan ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
> Then what exactly is the use case for importing from Thunderbird as per > [the > manual](https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/import-apps-mozilla.html.en)? > > That is surely for importing to local folders, not IMAP folders > > As I have between 50 - 100 GB of mail to sync, with it all backed up > locally, I'm happy to try to break things in an effort to avoid days if > not weeks of re-syncing. Are there details on this process (warnings > heeded) anywhere? A serious question: if you are using IMAP, why do you need to "sync" all your mail? Evolution keeps a copy of any mail you read as a local cache, there's no permanent store of the mail, it's not a duplicate of your IMAP account. > > I have access to both the mail server and local machine for all but my > gmail accounts. I'll test the process on less important demo accounts as > well. If you need a local store of *all* your mail, then you might like to look at something like Offline IMAP - this will drag down all your mail and keep it locally, then you point Evolution at that store rather than the actual IMAP account. You may be better looking at that to pre- populate with your extant local copy. > > I guess I could copy my local backups to the evolution maildir, ssh into > my mail server and rsync the maildirs. I'd hope it'd recognize there to > be no need to resync and duplicate everything at that point, but maybe > others have tried this with failure? The good thing about standards is that there's so many to choose from. I would strongly advise that you don't go fiddling around with the internal Evolution data stores. Yes, it is Maildir, but the encoding of the filenames and flags may not be consistent with what Evolution thinks it wants. Besides, the Maildir store is only for local accounts - the cache of remote/IMAP accounts is not Maildir and is certainly not meant to be an archival copy of the mail. P. ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
Then what exactly is the use case for importing from Thunderbird as per [the manual](https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/import-apps-mozilla.html.en)? As I have between 50 - 100 GB of mail to sync, with it all backed up locally, I'm happy to try to break things in an effort to avoid days if not weeks of re-syncing. Are there details on this process (warnings heeded) anywhere? I have access to both the mail server and local machine for all but my gmail accounts. I'll test the process on less important demo accounts as well. I guess I could copy my local backups to the evolution maildir, ssh into my mail server and rsync the maildirs. I'd hope it'd recognize there to be no need to resync and duplicate everything at that point, but maybe others have tried this with failure? I have no idea how I'd approach this for the gmail accounts though as I can't rsync or ssh into the gmail server. Any hints in the right direction and I'm happy to tinker and break things! Thats why I have backups! :) Best regards, Christopher On 10/27/20 01:29, Milan Crha via evolution-list wrote: On Tue, 2020-10-27 at 00:37 +0900, christopher via evolution-list wrote: Is there any way of doing the above? Hi, there basically isn't. Or it is, but it requires a lot of work, with which it would be too easy to break internal things. I suppose your server account is IMAP or any such, nothing stored locally. Evolution (or better libcamel) stores a local copy of the summary information (basically what you see in the message list) for each folder of that account in some format, plus it stores also already downloaded copies of the messages. Constructing the summary file from an .mbox file is possible, but it's really complicated process and it can break things. After all, those are private application data. You'll be much safer letting Evolution to create the summary on its own. Just add the remote account and that's all. Bye, Milan ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
Re: [Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
On Tue, 2020-10-27 at 00:37 +0900, christopher via evolution-list wrote: > Is there any way of doing the above? Hi, there basically isn't. Or it is, but it requires a lot of work, with which it would be too easy to break internal things. I suppose your server account is IMAP or any such, nothing stored locally. Evolution (or better libcamel) stores a local copy of the summary information (basically what you see in the message list) for each folder of that account in some format, plus it stores also already downloaded copies of the messages. Constructing the summary file from an .mbox file is possible, but it's really complicated process and it can break things. After all, those are private application data. You'll be much safer letting Evolution to create the summary on its own. Just add the remote account and that's all. Bye, Milan ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
[Evolution] Migrating from Thunderbird via import without duplicates
I understand how to import my mbox files from Thunderbird and I understand how to setup my accounts on Evolution, but I'm not sure how to do both without ending up with duplicates and essentially mitigating the entire advantage of having local copies to import from. --- Here is what I understand how to do now 1.) Import my "INBOX" mbox file to some new local folder (e.g. fooBox) 2.) Add existing mail account (e.g. f...@bar.com) on Evolution. 3.) Move all mail from fooBox to f...@bar.com->Inbox 4.) After step 2 is appears Evolution automatically syncs with the bar.com server and downloads all the mail I had in fooBox already. After step 3 now I have duplicates of everything and had to wait for all mail to download from bar.com. I can remove these duplicates, but this makes the import step seem useless. Is there any way to avoid downloading all mail from the server and use the local copies, but only download those not present in the local folder so as to save a bunch of bandwidth and time? --- Here is what I would expect to happen: 1.) Create a mail account (e.g. f...@bar.com) on Evolution but have some way to prevent it from automatically syncing 2.) Import my "INBOX" mbox file to Evolution in the f...@bar.com Inbox folder 3.) Enable sync for the f...@bar.com account 4.) Evolution checks the file list on bar.com and imports only those that do not already exist in the local folder --- Is there any way of doing the above? ___ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
